‘I was, I swear. And you’re right, there was an angle in it for me. I came forward because I thought it might turn out handy to run up a wee bit credit with the polis. I was walking a thin line in those days.’

‘You’re talking shite, Wullie. I made up the bit about the carrycot being purple. I don’t know what colour it was, and neither did you. Yet when I pressed you about it, you dreamed up a wee ad hoc explanation for why you remembered. Trust me, you’re walking a much thinner line by lying to me, especially when it’s so fucking obvious you’re lying.’

Ingrams began walking towards him, just a couple of slow steps. Bain looked forlornly at the door and at Jasmine, though what the hell he thought she could do was anybody’s guess.

It was obvious he was lying, which begged the question why he wouldn’t just admit it. The answer, Jasmine realised, was that something scared him more than the man in his living room.

He shook his head, saying, ‘I swear, I swear, I swear,’ until it became a near-tearful whisper, a mantra of desperate supplication.

‘I believe you,’ Ingrams said, eliciting a tiny degree of relief but a greater quantity of concerned doubt. ‘Not about seeing the Ramsays,’ he clarified. ‘You’ve been lying about that for twenty-seven years. But there’s one thing you’re not entirely lying about. You said you’ve never asked for money to talk about this, and I believe you about that. The papers came to you, you never went touting to them, because you never wanted to draw any scrutiny down upon your story. But today isnae the first time you’ve been paid for telling it, is it?’

Ingrams collapsed the tripod and slowly, very deliberately began unscrewing it from the base of the camera. Jasmine couldn’t begin to imagine what he might be planning to do with it, but Bain was clearly doing nothing but.

‘Who told you to lie, Wullie?’

‘Believe me, son,’ he said, shaking his head gravely, ‘you really don’t want to know.’

Ingrams had finally detached the tripod. He placed the camera carefully down into the bag and gripped the aluminium stand in his right fist.

‘Believe me, I really, really do.’

Jasmine looked from Ingrams’ fist to Bain’s face, expecting to see greater panic, but instead he wore a bitter, ugly grin. It was the vengeful smile of the beaten man who knows that whatever he is about to surrender is booby-trapped.

‘I’ll tell you who paid me,’ he sneered. ‘A right nasty, ruthless piece of work. More brutal, more greedy and more twisted than any gangster in the city. Fallan, his name was. Detective Inspector Iain Fallan. Though I believe you referred to him as Dad.’

Identity